Forty winks is about the struggle between knowledge and fear, belief and self-doubt. The main character is a scientist, supposedly unemotionally committed to conclusions drawn from years of research, her life’s work. But when this commitment comes into conflict with her beliefs about herself, her marriage and by extension her sense of self worth, it falters, because of a deep and very human insecurity, the possibility or “what if” that she is wrong, that she is unworthy, that she is unloved.